So long, farewell, etc etc

*cue a bugler playing 'The Last Post'...

Yes, this is all about goodbye, I'm afraid.

It's been a good few years, and yet this moment had to come. Today, I have decided to blog about bidding people fare-thee-well...

...what?

You thought that Julie's Gems was ending? Oh no, I'm on about a particular instance when I was meeting up with some friends.

...I'd best start again.

My job entails working a twilight shift, meaning that all the evening activities (Magic: the Gathering) had to be knocked on the head. On Monday, however, work had been cancelled, so I found myself free to play some cardboard crack (as M:tG is often known).

A good night was had, a Conspiracy cube was played, as well as a three-way standard, and some very nice trades for decks we were constructing. Not only that, but there was discussion about wedge commanders, Khans of Tarkir, and the merits of using counters or dice.*

However, all things must end, and I gathered my stuff together and dropped by various groups to say my goodbyes.

For none-British people, a Brummie is a resident of the city of Birmingham. Along with residents of the nearby area known as the Black Country (all the coal), including Walsall and Dudley (or Doodlay, as it is pronounced), this is a common way to send someone on their journey.

In any case, my contribution was well-received and served as a good way to end the shenanigans.

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* Ladies and gentlemen, this conversation is currently cruising at an altitude of 20,000 feet over your heads...

It's Twofer Monday!

A lot of our Gems come from when we are driving. I'll be concentrating on the road and the pillocks on it, and Julie will normally start drifting off to sleep, passing through a rich vein of Gems on the way.

On Sunday, we took Roxy back to the rescue centre, where she met up with one lady who had formed a deep attachment to her - and it was mutual. Both Roxy and this volunteer were over the moon to see each other.... but I'm getting way off track.

Years ago, I used to work at a dairy that was some distance from home. Despite this, there were a number of colleagues that lived in the same town as us - or pretty much on the way. This meant that there could be a bit of fuel saved if we shared a shift and a car for the journey. One of my colleagues had a fun little habit. Instead of wolf-whistling or shouting some crude epithet in appreciation of a comely young lady, he would shout 'sausage!' This wouldn't be aimed directly at the young lady, but just exclaimed in general, almost as an observation.

It's not hugely subtle, I admit, but since I picked up the habit - and then passed it on to Julie, it's become a lot less subtle. Shouting it out about a man? Wow...

The first time Julie did it, we were driving past a cyclist. I'm not sure who was more surprised, me or the cyclist. I know we both wobbled as we tried to keep on the road. Apparently, Julie had forgotten her window was open..

Sorry - I'm veering off track again - it's those sausages... er... yeah...

Um, where was ...ah, yes.

Anyway. Out for a drive to the rescue centre, and to the side of one road were the remains of an animal. A mammal of some sort - that's all we could tell.
Mind you, Julie reckoned it had a doppelganger.

This last was aimed at a cyclist we were passing. As I tried to contain my laughter, I looked my mirror and found that the lycra-clad bloke was doing the same thing...

For reference - some people may not have seen Ice Age (why not?). Scrat is a sabre-toothed squirrel with a fondness for acorns and a case of bad luck big enough to hold the world.

Acorn just out of shot...

Meanwhile, Sid the Sloth is an intentionally pathetic character who nonetheless has a decent side. Useless at pretty much everything, Sid only ever achieves anything by accident, and sleep usually only arrived at after some awkward shifting around on a bed of rock (and it's possibly that was meant to be a geological pun).

I have to admit tossing and turning a lot like this...

Spreading

There are many divisive topics of discussion. Politics is obviously the major area of activity, especially when you realise that 'politics' is not just anything to do with your government, but anything in life that has a meaningful impact on your your own life and those of the people you love (and, in the case of the abortion/sexual health situations, those of people who don't even exist yet. And may not).

Increasingly, people are becoming more and more overly opinionated about things that don't really matter, notably in the area of entertainment. And, for the record, I include all sport in that broadly-sweeping category. Why? Because when you get down to the basics, football (for example, he said, writing this on the day of the World Cup final 2014...) is not a job for most of the millions involved. And for those that are, so what? You are still only creating something to entertain the great unwashed masses (another quote mangled there*).

"I beg your pardon?"

Moving to the world of food (and I realise that some of you will now realise where this is going), it is oddly more cloudy. When you think about it, food is an essential part of life, so having an (informed) opinion about it can have a direct impact on the health of people that consume it. Eating something slightly out of date. Chili-eating contests. Fast food. Aspartame in diet drinks. Corn syrup in diet drinks. Marmite.

the offending article

Wait, what?

Some years ago, that reactionary and inflammatory rag of a newspaper known as The Daily Mail reported on a set of food products that were deemed in their pet scientists' (paid) opinions. Most of these foods were obvious, some of which I have listed above. However, tucked away in there was Marmite.

Horror of horrors, it seems Marmite is 11% salt! (full nutritional info here) That means that if you slather 100g on your toast you... wait, what? It seems someone has never eaten Marmite or has tasted it briefly and taken against it. In case you don't know, the black stuff is not for piling on like jam, Nutella, or peanut butter (blech). Seriously. If you tried eating 100g of Marmite in one go, you may as well call a priest for the lining of your mouth, as it would be stripped away like butter under a blowtorch.

This is where people get it wrong. Unlike the other spreads, Marmite is savoury, not sweet, and savoury generally means that it has more salt. Besides - have you seen how much salt is in bread? I bet you eat far more salt in that than you would in a single serving of Marmite.

Oh, and just for giggles, here is a link to a Daily Telegraph article commenting on how healthy Marmite can be.

As a company, Marmite are fully aware of how divisive their product can be. In fact, in Britain, a totally divisive subject is often known as a 'Marmite topic', and reactions to it range from this:

To this:

As I say, the company knows of this, and uses it extensively. In the past, they have gone for a 'political campaign' on behalf of the 'Love' and 'Hate' parties, but my favourite ads were drawings made of Marmite with the tagline 'you either Love it or hate it' (sic) scrawled on one side.

For the record, I hate Mr Bean.

In our house, the human population is split down the middle. I love it, Julie hates it, and we aren't going to let Roxy near it. Not if she wants to sleep in the same room as us.

It's fairly entertaining for me, as whenever Marmite is mentioned, Julie goes into a paroxysm of disgust. Some of this is a physical shudder, but much of it is a loss of sentence structure as she goes into a stuttering ramble mode.

Logic has been diminished

When I started writing these Gems down, I never gave a thought to context. All I committed to paper were the exchanges, divorced from the events that led to and followed them. This wasn't much of a problem to begin with, but now I have a small box full of scraps of paper and filled notebooks, I find myself looking at a set of almost unintelligible scrawls, with no idea of what prompted them.

All this means that I am now faced with two options. I can either fake a backstory, and hope I can get it as true to life as possible, or I waffle on, filling the post with a series of side-stories and unrelated topics.

No idea who did this, but it belongs to the surrealism art school.

...er ...perhaps not that unrelated...

Forcibly dragging the post to something resembling order, the only background I can provide to today's Gem is that me and Julie were discussing her ability to entertain with verbal slips (and spot-on bon mots). Very often, Julie will do herself down, claiming she is thick, slow, and dull.

That's one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to anger me and anyone else who knows Julie. Just because I remember lots of useless titbits of information, that does not mean I am more clever than the next person. When Julie talks about her work, I generally sit there while my eyes glaze over and the conversation flies so far over my head that it attains near-earth orbit. The reverse is true wen I begin discussing the intricacies of playing Magic: the Gathering.

However, there is one aspect of my psyche that would enforce such a self image. I can be very picky about some things. I like things to be correct and will attempt to correct people - including myself - when I believe them to be wrong. Since I spend a lot of time with Julie, this means that I do nit-pick at things she says. And trust me when I say I have got into trouble about doing this. Right, sis?

That said, may I present this legally-themed Gem.

Yes, I am fully aware that 'grounds of diminished responsibility' is a defence tactic, not an accusatory one. But - it was fun to roll with it, right up to the final brain crash.

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The two cartoon images come courtesy of an anime game series known as 'Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney', although some people, mostly in the West, will know them from the series of parody videos, Phoenix Wrong. These videos cut together parts from the games and then overdub music, quotes from movies, and classic comedy sketches, all punctuated by a banged gavel and a cry of "Objection!" Take a peek at this example.

Hiking through the hypothalamus

I have spoken before - a few times, actually - about Julie's tendency to get caught on a verbal loop and begin rambling, utterly the same few words or syllables - or similar ones. There is no way I can write those down with any accuracy, so just check out the posts with the 'rambling on' label.

Sometimes, these verbal loops tend toward the slightly manic, so I try to butt in and break the cycle. These days, all that happens is that I will say, "Julie...", and Julie will stop dead and 'complete'* the phrase with, "...shut up."

At first, however, all I could do was this.

(Hands up who misses Calvin & Hobbes...)

Recently, I broke a loop...

I know that feeling. In my case though, it's more that I zone out and it seems my brain has put up a note to the effect that it has gone for a weekend break....

"Screw this - I'm outta here."

*Please note that I have never told Julie to 'Shut up.' I love and respect her too much to do that.

I'm over thinking

I have a tendency to over-think things, and then get bogged down in all sorts of unnecessary details and malarky; it's one of the things that triggers my anxiety issues. It also makes playing some games more than a little problematic.

In the last few months, I have begun to play - and become addicted to* - the card game Magic: the Gathering

This is one of the cards in the current set. It is a creature, an enchantment, and it has an extra ability while repressing that same ability in opponents' cards. In addition to all that, it has some seriously sweet art, especially in the foil version (glowing eyes!)

For the uninitiated, there is a lot to take in, but to someone, even a relative novice such as myself, it is one of the simpler cards to play. You have lots of cards with lots of abilities, and you need to put some combination of them into a workable sixty card deck. Or a hundred card. Or forty.

Hmm... I can see your eyes glazing over already...

You see then, that to fashion a decent deck, you need to think about a lot of things, and that this is where I can have something of a problem. With so many options, I become paralysed by choices.

A few days ago, I was trying to come up with a new deck, but inspiration was eluding me. In fact, it had left the country. After far too long flicking through cards and boxes, all I had to show for my efforts were random stacks of cards on the table, and the beginnings of a headache.

I sat back, took my glasses off, and gave a heavy sigh, disturbing Julie, who had been checking her Facebook page.

Er...

----------------------------------------------------

*It has even been nicknamed 'cardboard crack'.

Verbal and Legal

It appears I missed Wednesday. Shame on me - especially as I had a Gem ready and waiting to go.

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Last week, we went to a live show (as opposed to a dead one. That would have been boring). The band in question go by the name of The Illegal Eagles, so named because they are a tribute band to - well, it's obvious, really, isn't it? The show was excellent; all the musicians really know their stuff.

The band began eighteen years ago, started by the second and fourth gents in the picture. Over the years, there have been a lot of members, although some more permanent than others. The bass player on the right has been with them almost since the start. The newest - and youngest - member of the group is on the left. No, it's not Smallville's Lex Luthor, unless he has had a personality implant. He's a good addition to the band, contributing, as almost all of them do, to every section of the stage. Mind you, the real Mr. Diversity is chap #4, playing a variety of guitars, drums, vocals (including lead), and even saxophone for 'The Heat is on', played in the set's solo hits section. One each from Glenn Frey, Don Henley ('Boys of Summer'), and Joe Walsh ('Rocky Mountain Way'*).

You may have noticed that I haven't, until now, mention the third gent in the lineup. That's because he is the only one whose name I know off the top of my head; Keith Atack. Keith is the only reason that we were there. You see, Julie was massively into a band called Child when she was younger, and Child featured a couple of twins by the name of Tim and, yes, Keith Atack. Here's a picture of Keith (or is it Tim? Heck - they're twins...) to show why Julie was such an ardent fan.

Handsome, no? By the way, I had a little trouble searching for images, and I really hope Big Brother understands that my search term 'child singles' - in Images, no less - was innocent. After all, I really wasn't wanting results of Destiny's Child.

Back on track.

Some days later, we were out, taking Roxy for a walk and discussing the concert. I raised the point that TIE have been sanctioned by members of the original Eagles, in much the same way as Pink Floyd have approved The Australian Pink Floyd Show. It's something that has always made me smile to myself; I mean, 'The Illegal Eagles' can be a bit of a tongue twister on its own, without throwing anything else into the mix.

I have no idea if I did get it right, but it's as close as anyone would get. Julie herself admits there would be no way of repeating it.

------------------------------------------------------------

* 'Rocky Mountain Way is good, but I prefer 'Life's Been Good'.

A damp doggy?

Many apologies for missing yesterday's post. It was a tad busy, and I hadn't prepared anything for automatic release.

----------------------------------------

This morning was a bit of a non-starter for me, thanks to a headache and a hay-fever-induced cold. Unfortunately, Roxy decided that she wasn't going to do anything either: Every time Julie tried to get Roxy to go for a walk, the dog refused to go any further than the front gate. She even refused to eat her breakfast.

It may have been that Roxy 'knows' that Saturdays are for us to go somewhere as a family, and wanted to wait until I was fine to walk with the ladies. Or it may be that Roxy was picking up on the fact I was a little under the weather and preferred to stay near me and keep an eye on me. Sweet, but annoying for Julie, who wanted to get on and do things and go places.

Eventually, I managed to break the cycle of doze-wake with a sore head-drop off again, and the three of us went for a walk. As soon as it was clear we were all going out, Roxy was as amenable as anything, and Julie had no trouble handling her.

Hmm. I may have phrased that poorly.

You see, when we got back home, I decided to chance some toast, and to have another go at having a cup of tea - I had made one at six in the morning, and then promptly dropped off back to sleep.

While I was in the kitchen, Julie sat on the sofa, gently stroking Roxy, who was sat on the floor. When they saw me come in the living room, Roxy moved to the sofa and looked at me, waiting. When I smiled, she took that as her cue to get up onto the sofa and sit, leaning against Julie,  but hoping that I would lean over the back of the sofa to give her a little fuss too.

Of course I did.

I didn't sit down right away - I had a cup of tea stewing in the kitchen. Since I like strong tea, I don't mind leaving it for a little while, but chewing it would be too much, so I went back to remove the tea bag and to add milk.

Back in the living room, Julie was making a fuss of Roxy and talking to her. Generally, I couldn't hear exactly what was being said. Mostly, all I could make out was, "mumblemumblemumbleRoxymumblemumblemumble." However, one phrase made its way through nice and clear.

As it turned out, Julie was rubbing Roxy's belly (something the dog absolutely adores), and confused 'damp' with 'slightly cooler than the rest of Roxy's body'. That said, I couldn't help but imagine Roxy's face when she heard that...

OK, not Roxy, but the expression
should say it all.

Rear-view cycling

CAUTION - THIS POST IS SLIGHTLY NSFW, DUE TO A FEW NAKED BUMS.

Some years ago, I used to work in a dairy. It was a fair journey, 27 miles each way - more, if there was some kind of trouble en route. When you factor in the fact we worked twelve-hour shifts, four days a week, it got to be rather tiring. In fact, not all our partners understood why we never felt up to doing much when we got home and invariable ended up in bed before 9pm.

One of my colleagues became fed up with his girlfriend moaning about just this issue, so he issued her the challenge of getting up when he did and doing things all the time and not really resting until he did at the end of the day. Two days in, she folded.

Another colleague, very much single, was one of those wiry men that seemed to have loads of energy - right up to the point a can of beer magically appeared in his hand. I nicknamed this one 'Skippy', since he had had a dodgy hip and then an operation to have a new one implanted.

Skippy lived in the next town up from us, so it made sense for me to act as a taxi service for those times our shift patterns overlapped. It was handy for me, too; on far too many occasions, I parked up at the dairy and sat there in the realisation that I had absolutely no recollection of the journey. I don't do mornings too well. You can have me up early or bright, but not normally both.

The drive home, during the warmer months, was usually quite pleasant. Music on, windows down and a nice chat. And nice views; especially if it was warm enough that ladies decided to shed a layer or two of clothing.

For my part, my normal reaction would be pursed lips and an appreciative nod.

Well, it was.

Skippy, for his sins, introduced me to the practice of uttering the word 'sausage' with varying volume upon seeing a nice pair of.. legs...

The idea was that it's a relatively safe thing to call out, since it seems like a random word. I mean, to anyone hearing it, you might as well be shouting 'billiards'.

Unless you shout it at a man. It becomes a lot less subtle at that point. Not that Skippy nor I did this. Nope, this was all Julie.

The first time she did it, she shouted it at a cyclist as we were overtaking him. It didn't help that Julie had forgotten her window was wound down... Mind you, it didn't help me, either; I was laughing so hard I could barely see to drive.

I know, I know - we're childish, aren't we?

-------------------------------------------

Skip forward some years and a veritable string of sausages to the Saturday just gone.

We had been out for a nice long walk with Roxy, and were taking a scenic route home. We were moving slowly, since there was a cyclist up ahead. As we drew up behind him, we saw that his clothing could have benefited with being a size or two larger. He was wearing a pair of shorts which were doing their job adequately, but his t-shirt was riding up to reveal a pale expanse of lower back.

If that's all she wanted, she could just go to one of those special events that take place occasionally...

Long and wrong

The weather in the southern parts of Britain have not been what you could call clement lately. In fact, to paraphrase Robin Williams' character in Good Morning Vietnam, it has been (and apparently will be for at least a couple of weeks more) "wet and pissy with outbreaks of increasingly windy, wet and pissy."

(Real quote:
[imitating Walter Cronkite]
Adrian Cronauer: I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, what it is, what it shall be, what it was. The weather out there today is hot and shitty with continued hot and shitty in the afternoon. Tomorrow a chance of continued crappy with a pissy weather front coming down from the north. Basically, it's hotter than a snake's ass in a wagon rut.)

If you haven't seen that film, do so.

Back in Eastbourne, the weather continues to be windy enough to go straight through you, rather than bothering to go around. And, because it's that time of year in the northern hemisphere,* it's a tad on the chilly side. That means that driving is a little cool on the hands - until the heating warms up enough that the steering wheel doesn't try and give you frostbite.

Yes, I have gloves. Yes, I have been wearing them. After a while, when things are a bit warmer, I take the gloves off and, if Julie is with me, pass them to her to look after while I do the driving.

Last night, we realised shopping was necessary - never mind us, the dog food was running low. Since Roxy enjoys going for a ride in the car, we took her with us and took the long way to Tesco. Eventually, the inside of the car reached a temperature that my fingers considered to be comfortable, so I doffed the gloves and gave them to Julie.

I may have been concentrating on driving, but I was vaguely aware that Julie was fiddling with my gloves; I never gave it much thought, to be honest.

After a moment of silence, just as I was about to drive us onto a junction, Julie announced this...

NOT what you want to hear as you attempt to negotiate a busy junction. I do have to admit, though, that I was most impressed with the way Julie managed to begin with a basic malapropism and then stutter her way into a snippet from Gilbert and Sullivan...

Again, many thanks to the internet, where almost any image you search for is but a few clicks away. Googling 'tentacles and testicles' yielded this beauty.

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* by the way, please spare a thought for people in the southern hemisphere. While Britain is being blown about and drowned, and the US and Canada are having ridiculously low temperatures, places like Australia are suffering with forest fires and the like. And when they have fires, they don't muck about. Be safe, my antipodean friends.

Pre-emptive Alzheimer's?

There comes a time when you have to give up. You have tried your very best, tried approaching the problem from different directions, and it finally becomes apparent that you should really have been approaching the problem from a different dimension.

We have tried to explain it before, but it strikes me that all we have done over various posts is provide various possible mechanisms for Gems to occur. The actual cause? It's my belief that Julie trusts me enough and is comfortable enough around me that she can leave her highly-ordered office worker mentality behind and let herself go with a huge sigh of relief and a steady flow of WTF.

Today's Gem is a prime example of my inability to 'get' what Julie meant. Trust me; context makes no difference. Worse, the longer I look at it, the more I become convinced it makes sense, if only I could stare at it long enough for my eyeballs to start bleeding and tartan spiders to emerge from my fingernails...
>shudder<
Sorry. I must have missed some medication...

In the meantime, I'll leave you with the Gem. If you understand it, then good for you. Just stay well away from me and pay attention to those nice people in the white uniforms...

Steamed about physics

I've bought a new book.

I'm a long-time Terry Pratchett fan. I have several books signed by him, have met him in the process of said signing, and have even helped to interview him on BBC Radio 4, talking about the novel Mort and other things Discworld. He is as genial and sharp a chap as you would expect him to be, and I'm going to shut up now, or several friends of mine will be visiting me to give me a good kicking...

Because I enjoy reading, I am often known to have failed to go to bed at nights, simply due to the fact I didn't want to put a book down. However, I already had something else I wanted to do today, so I went into town, picked up the copy of Raising Steam I had reserved (nearly coming away with an expensive slipcased version in the process), and dropped it off at home before heading off out again.

By the time I returned home, Julie had come back from work and had her tea (evening meal, for non-English folks). We chatted a little, and after a little while, Julie asked me if I had got hold of my book yet.

"OH, yes."

She smiled, and asked the question I had been expecting.

Uhhhh... what?

Pitiful Pontiff

Don't you just love it when a sentence comes out of nowhere. There you are, the two of you enjoying a little peace on a drive out in the country. Then someone says something and at least one of you is thinking where the hell did THAT come from? Here's Julie.

It's just as well I drive mostly on autopilot, because I had a severe case of braincrash when Julie said that. As it turned out, She meant the Christian God, as opposed to Allah, Buddha, or any other deity.

Damn - some preamble would have been nice.

Whynot wotnot?

I try to get them all, I really do. Unfortunately, there are some times when circumstances prevent me from doing so. Most often, this is when I am driving, for obvious reasons. Even then, I can sometimes somehow persuade Julie to scribble down a hasty note.

Similarly, we will be in public situations where my whipping out a notepad would be either inadvisable, impolite or downright impossible.* Such situations include; at the counter in a bank, drenched in a downpour, in the front row of a stand-up comedy show... you get the idea.

However, the most common cause for my failure to document each and every Gem is this; when Julie is in full-on Gem Mode (and yes, it does deserve the capitalisation), I can't even mentally process what is being said, let alone jot anything down.**

On more than one occasion, I have been brain-crashed by a Gem and my speech centres have similarly been affected. When that happens, all I can do is splutter out a disbelieving, "...WHAT?"

It seems I respond in such a manner quite frequently. Frequently enough for Julie to Gem right back at me.

...of course it is, silly me.
I think I'll go and have a lie down...



* Is it me, or am I writing very alliteratively today?
** Now, imagine how I feel when I'm driving around an unfamiliar town centre, trying to cope with Julie in Gem Mode...

The great Greek flip-flop flop

Heh - say that fast three times in a row...

Anyway - as I mentioned in Monday's post, We have a friend from Greece visiting for a few days. Since she and Julie are familiar with each other, it was no effort to either of them to fall into an easy banter - especially when it came to taking digs at me. Julie may come out with some odd things now and then (yes, really!!), but she is very quick-witted, and usually manages to put me in my place with no problem.

However, the Sunday was the first day after our friend arrived and she was still somewhat jetlagged. Since I am really not at all good in the morning, Julie was pretty much the only bright spark in a sea of bleary dullness. It didn't help that I had the grand idea of taking our friend to her first car boot fair, an event which can be best described as a yard sale held in a field, where everyone turns up to sell their crap - I mean surplus goods.

As you can tell, you do get some turn up in vans; traders of one sort or another - but they have to pay a larger pitch fee as they will take up more space. Fair play. It is truly astonishing, though, just what people try to sell. Mind you, it's not nearly as astonishing as the fact that people will actually buy it. From rusty car parts, old Paul Young records (usually No Parlez) to a truly staggering amount of baby clothes and dog-eared paperback books, you will find pretty much everything.

On the other hand, you will also find the odd hidden gem, something that is just what you need. That rusty car part might be from an Aston Martin, a part that was last in production fifty years ago. If you are living on the breadline and are expecting a baby, this will be an ideal way to clothe your newborn tot. And yes, there are still some Paul Young fans out there.

As for me and Julie, we view these events as a good opportunity to add to our already substantial collection of hedgehog ornaments, toys and nick-nacks. It may have been at a car boot fair or in a charity shop that we managed to snag a lovely hedgehog doorstop.

Handsome chappie, no? Oddly enough, we haven't named this one, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

But I digress. This hedgehog is not simply for looks, we do utilise it as a doorstop. In fact, the door it is responsible for is that which belongs to the guest room, the room in which our friend is currently sleeping as I type this.

Back to the car boot fair. It had been a hot day and we had just dragged our still-weary friend around a dusty field. Having said that, we did treat her to her very first cream tea - with clotted cream, naturally. Unfortunately, despite the delicious refreshments and the elation of having bought her very first item from a car boot fair (a Stephen Fry book), our friend was unaccountably tired, so we bundled her off to her room for a bit of a rest.

On the way into her room, though, she stumbled. Now, I thought she had tripped over the 'hoggy doorstop, and, jokingly, accused her of mistreating that poor, poor animal, "I mean, what has it ever done to you?" I demanded.

How wrong I was. Our friend had not been guilty of mistreating a weighty stuffed animal, but of making a small misstep as a result of her footwear.

You mean, instead of being 'flop-flip'?

Heh. What a day; first boot fair, first cream tea - and her first Gem.

Right is wrong, Left is right

On our recent visit to my mother, we found ourselves feeling a tad peckish between meals. Fortunately, Julie had planned for such an eventuality, and delved into a bagful of bits to snack on. Pulling out a pack of Smartie cake bars, she passed one over to me.

As I was unwrapping mine, however, I heard Julie make a small noise of annoyance. As I asked what was wrong, Julie stood and began to look around the floor. I realised immediately what had happened; one of the smarties (candy-coated bits of chocolate, similar to the plain m&m) had fallen off her cake and onto the floor.

IMPORTANT BIT - If you own a dog or like to feed dogs, please note that chocolate is highly poisonous for dogs.

With that in mind, we both started searching for the errant sweetie before Toby, my mum's Jack Russell terrier could beat us to it. Fortunately, it was bright yellow and I spotted it almost immediately. Since Julie was closer to it, though, it was easier for me to guide her to it than to get in her way.

Bearing in mind that we were both facing the same way, I had to think for a moment whether that did make any sense or not.

The wrong side of the tracks

Julie has a friend, an ex-colleague she has kept in touch with. The thing is, Julie's friend, Sue has a reputation for being a bit absent-minded and prone to changing her mind six or seven times a minute. Put it this way - even Julie labels Sue as being 'a bit dappy'.

Yes, I know. Scary, isn't it?

Quite some time ago, we were giving Sue a lift to visit a friend in Bexhill, the next town along from us. I have already related one part of this journey (click here to read).

The thing is, just before that event, Julie and Sue were deeply engaged in a conversation about the location of the local railway line.
From the outset, I was astounded by the fact this conversation was taking place - and that it was going on for so long. Back and forth, the two women tried to work out where the trains would be going by. After a few minutes of this, I snapped.

Just in case anyone thinks I'm being too harsh on Sue and Julie, may I present this map, courtesy of Google.

See that blue stuff? That's the sea, that is.

Hayling Island week: A question of questionable logic

Last week, Julie and me decided to get in the car and just head west. Having looked at the map, Julie asked if it would be OK if we went to a place called Hayling Island, near Portsmouth. I had been thinking of possibly going to Portsmouth itself, but as I'm all for exploring the lesser known places, I readily agreed.

As you can tell, Hayling Island isn't a large place, being just over three miles wide at its widest point. Nor, as shown by the lack of main roads, is it a busy one. Sitting on Britain's south coast, slap bang next to the major port of, well, Portsmouth, it is largely left to its own devices. As a result, the relative lack of tourists makes it a more pleasant place to be.

There is a funfair right in the middle of the lengthy sea front, but off to the sides, you have quieter places to enjoy yourself.
When we got there, the fair was closed and staff were carrying out routine maintenance chores to the various rides, and the car park was near as damn empty. It was free, too, which is always nice. We drove straight in and up to the wall, which gave us a cracking view of the sea and the Isle of Wight to the south-west.

On the journey, we had been enjoying listening to the radio (Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2, since you ask. Such a nice chap), and doing our usual banter/singing/arguing with the programme. Among other things, this does tend to prime julie for a day full of Gems, so I made absolutely sure I had my notepad and a pen with me.

I wasn't disappointed.

In short order, as we ambled through the fairground, Julie was baffling me with a lengthy ramble, twisting sentence structure and logic to such a degree there was no way I could keep up. Julie finally noticed my brains were about to dribble out of my ears and stopped chattering, laughing.
All I could say was, "...what was...?"

Oops.

Ouch... my I think I sprained my brain...

The extreme egg fiasco

We have a problem. We like food. Unfortunately, we're not too good at controlling what we eat, nor the quantities thereof. Oh, and by the way, that statement doesn't just apply to my wife and me, but Western civilisation in general. We have come to consume too much of the wrong things and too much in general.

I'm currently trying to work with a dietician. Julie, on the other hand, tried that and various diets a long time ago. In the end, we agreed surgery was the only option. Julie had a gastric bypass, a version known as the Roux-en-y procedure.

This, without a word of exaggeration, has changed her life completely. It's entirely probable that it saved her life. Compulsive eating is a psychological problem, one that our primitive bodies are ill-equipped to cope with.

For those who can't stomach (sorry) looking at graphic details of operations, the notion is a simple one. Basically, the stomach is cut in half and the appropriate tubing is connected up to a much smaller gastric pouch.
Initially, the diet is severely limited, but with time, the patient can once again eat much of what they did before - just in drastically smaller portions. Even then, the stomach is still an elastic organ. It can stretch, and does. However, even taking that into account, one would still never be able to eat the massive portions as before.

It's a difficult situation, not just for the patient. A lot of human social interaction is based around the consumption of food and drink, and most pubs, cafes and restaurants don't really understand the concept of needing a tiny portion. Indeed, many get rather shirty when you ask for a child's portion when you have clearly left childhood far too long ago.

So how small does the stomach become after the operation?
About the size of a hen's egg.

Seriously.

Obviously, you're never going to be able to take in what you could, so if you have this op, then you're going to have to take a daily dose of vitamin & minerals in tablet form..
As I mentioned, the stomach may regain some magnitude, but only in a small way. Maybe twice the size of an egg, maybe a bit more.

It's not an exact thing, because everyone is different. Some keep their diet to minimal levels, some find they can't eat certain foods any more; some can't handle sweet stuff, others have trouble with greasy food - oh and it really doesn't take much alcohol either.

So, when Julie and me were in a cafe having a bite to eat, I was ploughing through a nice panini. My wife, however, was gingerly picking at hers. Oh, she was enjoying it, but necessity meant that she had to take it carefully, or she would end up with a side-effect known as 'dumping' - although this is more usually encountered in association with sugary foods.

With this in mind, we began to discuss how much her stomach will have changed in the few years since her operation.

...ummm...
...ok...

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Just in case you didn't know, the World Book Night Prize draw is now closed. We will be filming a clip today for the drawing of the winners and posting the results tomorrow.